‘ghost club: yeats’s and dickens’s secret society of spirits’..

When it comes to ghosts belief and outright disbelief are not the only options—or at least they weren’t in nineteenth-century Britain.

The Victorians didn’t stick to simple arguments about the existence of ghosts; they also argued about how – when and why they might exist.

Spiritualists attacked spiritualists over whether the supernatural should be classed as natural.

Scientists discussed whether psychological or physiological factors were at play.

Inventors – politicians – journalists and madmen joined in too.

Indeed it was such a popular multidisciplinary pursuit that its practitioners needed new places to meet – outside of their existing societies and various organizations were established to debate the boundaries of the immaterial.